Partial lighting can be a blessing or a curse. Often it is caused by strongly directional light, like the sun at midday, or light that is partially blocked by vegetation or other obstructions. It cause some areas of a photo to be over or under exposed, or at least make it challenging to get the …
Taking bird photos on an overcast day can be a little tricky because you may not have as much light to work with. On the other hand, there can also be a few advantages. Natural light on a cloudy day tends to be cooler, so it can really bring out rich greens and blues. This …
Silhouettes aren’t particularly useful for documenting wildlife, so they’re not something I have a lot of experience doing. Still, they can be something interesting to try when the lighting pretty much guarantees you can’t do anything else. This snowy egret was walking right through the reflection of sunlight on a pond, a situation where there’s …
Silhouettes aren’t particularly useful for documenting wildlife, so they’re not something I have a lot of experience doing. Still, they can be something interesting to try when the lighting pretty much guarantees you can’t do anything else. This snowy egret was walking right through the reflection of sunlight on a pond, a situation where there’s …
Having the subject illuminated from behind can be a very nice effect. Out in the wild it can be tricky, compared to using backlighting in a studio setting where the photographer is controlling the light from light from all directions. The main benefit of backlighting is achieving a nice glow around the edge of the …
Even if it’s just sunlight, you are using light with every photo you take. You’re also making decisions about how you use that light, whether you’re thinking about them or not. We delve into light in today’s Bird Watch SXM column, and all week on the blog.
Back in the day, before SD cards, cameras used a kind of memory stick that usually came in a little canister and they called it film. Different kinds of film had different speeds, indicating how much light it needed for exposure. “Faster” film required less light, but was grainier and “slow” film required more light …
I propose that aperture, the size of the hole where light is entering the camera, is the least important setting for this type of photography. Having a big opening lets lots of light in, which is great if you are only opening the shutter for a very short moment of time. However, there are some …
Of all the camera settings, shutter speed is probably the most important when you are zoomed in. Normally, when I’m photographing birds, I use shutter priority, meaning I set the shutter speed I want/need and let the camera adjust the aperture to get the right exposure. The shutter speed is the amount of time the …